How Trump wrecked the Georgia GOP

Former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during the Georgia state GOP convention at the Columbus Convention and Trade Center on June 10, 2023 in Columbus, Georgia. | Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

DEMOLITION CREW — Many of the 19 defendants charged in the new Trump indictment are by now familiar names because of their relentless efforts to push phony vote fraud claims or get the 2020 election results overturned in Georgia and elsewhere.

But there are a handful who aren’t well known outside the state, and together they reveal another side of the Georgia story — how Donald Trump wrecked one of the most successful state parties in the nation in just a few short years.

First, let’s rewind to the period before the 2016 presidential election.

At that time, Georgia was as lockdown red as it could be. In 2012, the outcome of the presidential race seemed so predetermined that exit polls weren’t even conducted in Georgia.

For well over a decade, the GOP controlled both legislative chambers and the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state. It also had possession of the bulk of the state’s 14 House seats and both U.S. Senate seats.

But in the seven years since Trump first appeared on Georgia’s ballot, the GOP fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the worse.

On the surface, not much has changed: Republicans still control state government. But Cobb and Gwinnett counties, once the Atlanta area’s fast-growing, reliably Republican suburban giants, have bolted the GOP camp. Joe Biden won the state in 2020, marking just the second time in 28 years that Georgia voted Democratic for president. And Republicans lost both U.S. Senate seats — in elections where Trump can be said to be the proximate cause of defeat.

In 2024, Georgia figures to be one of the key presidential battleground states.

Meanwhile, the state party is at war with itself, a needless conflagration set off by Trump after top Republicans refused to heed his demands to overturn the 2020 results. Trump vigorously attacked and endorsed primary challengers to both Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both of whom had been thrown under the bus by David Shafer, the former state party chair who now faces eight felony counts.

Shafer is one of three Trump false electors charged in the Fulton County case — the others are state Sen. Shawn Still and former Coffee County GOP chair Cathleen Latham, an influential player in south Georgia Republican politics. Latham was cited in the indictment for her involvement in an alleged scheme to help grant pro-Trump activists unauthorized access to voting equipment in her county.

How deep in the muck is the state Republican Party apparatus? The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported last month that the Georgia GOP spent more than $520,000 in legal expenses in the first six months of 2023 to represent the so-called alternate Republican electors targeted in the Fulton County probe.

Whatever the outcome of the case, the state party will never be the same. In Georgia’s 2022 GOP primary, nearly all of the candidates endorsed by Trump were thrashed at the ballot box. Yet Trump still maintains considerable support within the party’s activist base and leads in early 2024 Georgia presidential primary polls. The rifts between hardline pro-Trump factions and the establishment aren’t going away anytime soon.

That much was clear today after Trump continued making unsubstantiated claims on social media, promising to release “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”

Kemp, now a second-term governor who draws mention as a presidential prospect himself, had a ready response.

“The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen,” he wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.. “For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus.”

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— Biden plans to head to Maui ‘as soon as we can’ as death count rises from wildfires: President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Maui, Hawaii, “as soon as we can,” he said Tuesday in the wake of the wildfires that raged through the island to become the country’s most lethal wildfire in a century.

The wildfires have left 99 people dead as of Monday since the fires began last week in the historic town of Lahaina on Maui island. The catastrophic blaze has led to mass evacuations and widespread power outages, impacting thousands. On Thursday, Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Hawaii in order to free up federal aid to support the island.

— Trump’s likely bid to take the Georgia case to federal court: One of the first big battles in the new racketeering case against Donald Trump is likely imminent: Should the former president face a jury in state or federal court?

Although the charges were filed in state court in Fulton County, Ga., Trump is sure to attempt to “remove” the case to federal court, where he would potentially have a friendlier jury pool and the chance of drawing a judge whom he appointed to the bench.

To try to get the case into federal court, Trump is expected to argue that much of the conduct he’s been charged with was undertaken in his capacity as an officer of the federal government, because he was still president during the critical period when he and his allies attempted to subvert the 2020 election results. A federal law, known as a “removal statute,” generally allows any “officer of the United States” who is prosecuted or sued in state court to transfer the case to federal court if the case stems from the officer’s governmental duties.

— Why the new charges against Trump are different: At the start of the week, Donald Trump faced 78 felony counts across three criminal prosecutions. Then, near midnight on Monday in Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis added a fourth case with 13 more.

In some ways, the new charges resemble the old. Beyond the similarities, though, the Georgia case stands apart. In terms of the sheer scope of wrongdoing it alleges, the 98-page indictment sweeps far more broadly than any of the previous indictments against Trump. Some of the charges carry a mandatory minimum prison sentence. And for the first time, a panoply of high-ranking aides, attorneys and allies have been named as co-defendants alongside Trump.

— Trump says he plans to hold press conference responding to Georgia indictment: Former President Donald Trump says he will hold a press conference this coming Monday in response to a Georgia grand jury indicting Trump and 18 allies on racketeering charges.

Trump claimed in a Truth Social post Tuesday that a report from his team was conducted on the “presidential election fraud” and that all charges should be dropped based on the findings of that report. The press conference is scheduled just days before Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said Trump and his co-defendants are expected to surrender on Aug. 25.

— Third defendant in Trump classified documents case pleads not guilty: Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Mar-a-Lago and third defendant in the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in Florida, pleaded “not guilty” on Tuesday.

This was De Oliveira’s third court appearance for an arraignment and plea, after delays when he initially failed to secure a local attorney, as rules require in the Southern District of Florida.

CHRISTIE: GORE ACTUALLY CONCEDED — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie rejected former President Donald Trump’s claim that he behaved similarly to Al Gore after the 2020 election. “When Al Gore lost his legal challenges, he conceded the election,” the GOP Christie said. “Donald Trump has been much different.”

The Messenger writes that GOP presidential hopeful also dismissed Trump’s claims that the justice department is being weaponized against him. “Running for president is his choice,” Christie said. “But it is not an excuse for the justice system to continue to operate.”

DEBATE PREP — He says he won’t sign the pledge required to participate, but former President Donald Trump’s Republican rivals are actively preparing as if he will be onstage for the GOP’s first 2024 presidential debate next week, writes the Associated Press.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is hosting mock debate sessions with someone playing the part of the former president. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been participating in weekly debate prep sessions for several weeks with an eye toward drawing clear contrasts with Trump. And Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, is planning to show she can stand up to bullies.

Republican officials in and around rival campaigns believe Trump will end up on the debate stage regardless of the drama in the days leading up to the high-stakes affair.

A view of an Azerbaijani checkpoint recently set up at the entry of the Lachin corridor, the Armenian-populated breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region on May 2. | Tofik Babayev/AFP via Getty Images

HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE — The U.N. Security Council has scheduled an emergency meeting to discuss the worsening humanitarian situation in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, after Armenia urged the international community to help end Azerbaijan’s monthslong blockade of the isolated territory, writes Gabriel Gavin.

A schedule for the work of the Security Council, published late Monday night, confirmed that the appeal will be discussed on Wednesday. Armenia’s ambassador to the U.N., Mher Margaryan, last week wrote to the international conflict resolution body to warn Nagorno-Karabakh is “on the verge of a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe.”

With warnings of an impending famine and reports that the rate of pregnant women miscarrying has almost tripled as a result of malnutrition, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, last week issued a report arguing there is “a reasonable basis to believe a genocide is being committed.” If the international community fails to act, he told POLITICO, then they are “complicit in genocide.”

BORDEAUX BLOODBATH — Winemakers in the prestigious Bordeaux region are set to uproot thousands of hectares of vineyards as altered consumer habits and global warming hit one of the crown jewels of the French agricultural industry, writes Giorgio Leali.

Given Bordeaux’s flagship status in the public’s mind, this might seem surprising. Yet a mix of factors — including a decline in red wine consumption, falling demand from China and difficulties in producing wine in an increasingly warm environment — is strikingly transforming wine production in France.

Red wine consumption has dropped significantly in the last decades as French drinkers are turning to other, more refreshing beverages such as beer. While high-end Bordeaux bottles such as grand cru still easily find buyers, demand for entry-level mass red wines has been dropping.

FORCE OF NATURE — The tantalizing theory that a fifth force of nature could exist has been given a boost thanks to unexpected wobbling by a subatomic particle, physicists have revealed.

According to current understanding, there are four fundamental forces in nature, three of which — the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces — are explained by the standard model of particle physics. However, the model does not explain the other known fundamental force, gravity, or dark matter — a strange and mysterious substance thought to make up about 27% of the universe.

Now, the Guardian writes, researchers have said there could be another, fifth, fundamental force of nature. The data comes from experiments at the Fermilab US particle accelerator facility, which explored how subatomic particles called muons – similar to electrons but about 200 times heavier – move in a magnetic field.

On this date in 1990: Around 100,000 people gathered in Kim il-Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea to celebrate the 45th anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule. August 15 is commemorated as Korean independence day in North and South Korea. | Vincent Yu/AP Photo

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